Business organizations often consider the development and maintenance of their own runtime with required data processing engines or retaining obsolete versions of legacy Cloudera runtimes to reduce technology spend. However, these options come with substantial cost and risk as organizations underestimate the complexity and expertise required to operate a platform for advanced analytics. The following sections detail the major activities involved in managing and operating a custom open-source distribution.
1. Development of Custom Platform
Integrating the latest versions of open source projects for data processing, storage, orchestration, security, and governance requires substantial engineering effort. Continuous upgrades and testing cycles are necessary to ensure the platform meets functional and non-functional requirements.
2. Integration of Custom Monitoring and Management Tooling
Identifying and configuring relevant tools for common platform management tasks adds complexity to managing a custom runtime. Proprietary Cloudera capabilities provide management tools at no extra cost, reducing the total cost of ownership for the custom platform.
3. Ongoing Platform Management Effort
Managing a custom platform results in greater management effort due to the complex environment configuration and monitoring. Cloudera Manager simplifies these tasks and offers unique capabilities for user authentication and environment visualization.
4. Issue Resolution
In a custom runtime, issue resolution becomes challenging. Cloudera has deep expertise in open source projects and a support organization capable of resolving platform issues regardless of complexity. Cloudera Observability provides advanced service health and performance metrics, root cause analysis, and proactive issue prevention.
To simplify the process and ensure that customers continuously receive the latest stability, reliability, and performance improvements, Cloudera provides Long Term Support (LTS) releases and regular maintenance releases called Service Packs. These releases include bug fixes, security updates, and performance improvements, drastically simplifying the cluster upgrade process.
In conclusion, opting for a custom open source platform requires substantial investment in terms of time, effort, and expertise. Partnering with Cloudera provides a cost-effective solution with deep expertise, support resources, and advanced tooling, ultimately reducing the total cost of ownership and minimizing platform downtime.